South London Bon Viveur

"Aufwertung" is the German for enhancement. I wonder if the LH PR team are furiously evolving comms based around this word

TTmex

Having done 8 European legs on LH a couple of summers ago, the only thing id miss is a free beer. The food handed out was egregious. A sandwich no bigger than a pack of playing cards or a slice of cake no bigger. Similarly to my hope for BA, I'd like to see airlines continue to offer some kind of drinks for free, e.g. tea, coffee, water, beer perhaps. But food not really. My last BA flight before BoB was a crappy ham and cheese croissant that was squashed. So I'm happy to say the food offered for free by these airlines didn't meet my expectations for what would feed me. As for the airline pissing off customers, BA already showed the market will happily keep flying even without food offering. I think it was only a matter of time to LH etc followed.

This all to me sounds like one of the behavioral experiments carried out at a top university in the US involving a Hershey kiss and a Lindt truffle. Link to an article about it here. https://danariely.com/2009/08/10/the...ee-experiment/

In short, people could only but one or the other. When the the kiss was 1c and the truffle 26c, the buying behavior was fairly even across the two. When the kiss was dropped to 0, and the truffle to 25 (same price difference), 90pc of people bought the kiss, even though the truffle was the better product.

If we apply this to airlines, they may be looking for people to buy up to more premium products because the power of free has been removed.

Just my 2c, or 2 hershey kisses on the matter.

Concerto

The Swiss BoB stuck around until 2007 actually, and after a promising start the quality just got worse and worse. I think one of the problems was that a lot of the flights were offered as a one class affair, especially on the smaller planes. I recall one anecdote, which possibly helped generate enough steam for them to rescind the BoB idea back then, when a passenger who had booked 1st class from Birmingham to somewhere in the US wanted something on the BHX-ZRH flight, a bottle of water and a snack I think. They asked him for payment and, well, he kicked up such a stink and noise at having to pay for a bit of basic service when he had spent well of 10,000 pounds for his 1st class ticket, that the reverberations were felt long after. They got a lot of things wrong back then.

swiss_global

My memories are equally unpleasant. They actually did have Business Class, but on one of my flights connecting to long haul I got (involuntarily) downgraded to Y and to a middle seat in the last row ... However, they offered me one of those Coop snacks "for free", in an attempt to make it a "full compensation" of the downgrade.

BA6948

unfortunately this won‘t be possible. LH will face the same issue as BA. Having to cater for Business Class meals, there won‘t be enough space and flight attendants to cater for Economy BoB meals or sandwiches.

BA6948

unfortunately this won‘t be possible. LH will face the same issue as BA. Having to cater for Business Class meals, there won‘t be enough space and flight attendants to cater for Economy BoB meals or sandwiches.

hfly

The reason that M&S is no longer doing it is because its imply is NOT profitable for them. I would strongly suggest that any premium airline should just stick to free non-alcoholic beverages and a small packaged snack for short haul and just leave it at that.

wilsnunn

Even on routes like CAI and AMM which are now short haul?

FlightDetective

Is that so? Can you point to some figures to back that up?
.

hfly

No, can you? What I can tell you is that someone I know at M&S told me over a year ago that less product was sold per day on the entire BA short haul network than at just ONE of their midsize London locations (in a day), and their actual cost was higher. Also this person mentioned that the entire venture was detrimental to their brand and a reputational risk, as they were afraid that all the negative experiences experienced by passengers on BA flights would be attributed to M&S rather than BA, even when the majority of such things were out of M&S's control.

mrow

I can understand the negative brand rep issue. Only time I needed to buy food on board due to delays and no time for lounge during connection they had none of the sandwiches available. Really annoying when I was famished and didn’t have other options available.

1Aturnleft

Ah good old Tourvest. The invisible face of BoB who pretty much screwed up the logistics of fresh products so that they wouldn't have to foot the bill for unsold sandwiches, instead favouring ambient snacks with a longer shelf life. Tapas selection box anyone?

M&S were the brand associated with BoB and got negative press as a result.

BA were the brand who gave Tourvest the contract in the first place. Most people assume the logistics and supply issues were between BA and M&S without realising there was a third party largely responsible. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson before their next venture with Waitrose parties TBA

lhrpete

And all this is why Waitrose won't touch it.

hfly

willsnun, I cannot speak about AMM and CAI, then again they have been shorthaul for 30 seconds now. I can speak from personal experience about IST, which prior to them was in fact the longest route with BoB, and which there has NEVER EVER been enough food loaded. I can personally attest that on many such flights BA has sold no more than perhaps 15 sandwiches/buttys, etc, and often no more than 2 or 3? How can I attest to this? Because I have seen with my own eyes them out of everything by the fifth row of ET. Sometimes by the second row of ET. But let's look at CAI and AMM. Let's pretend that they sell 50 sandwiches on each flight, for a whopping 100 sandwiches a day. That is what they sell at a mid sized London location in a few minutes. So no, it makes no difference.

hfly

Actually willsnun, non that I have reread your question. No, I think that CAI and AMM as well as IST and ATH should be served exactly what they are meant to be served..................MID-HAUL. For DECADES BA's internal classification system has classified any flight over 1500 miles as MID HAUL. Mid haul is supposed to receive both seats and food and bev that is superior to short haul, but less than long haul. As BA has NEVER had a real mid haul product (well they temporarily did with the BMed acquisition, namely their A321's) they have always either gone to one extreme or the other, with IST and ATH getting s/h and CAI/AMM/DME getting long haul. Now these are going S/h again. The idea of serving nothing not even water (and tank water simply is not acceptable) is a travesty. I could really care less whether anything is serves on an AMS flight, if you take off ontime and land without delay, you are talking about maybe 20 minutes at cruise altitude, but 4,5,6 hours without anything is criminal.